Re: CLAHub and the FSF copyright assignment

From:

Stefan Monnier

Subject:

Re: CLAHub and the FSF copyright assignment

Date:

Sat, 13 Dec 2014 23:24:33 -0500

User-agent:

Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/25.0.50 (gnu/linux)

> Can GNU/the FSF use this resource to fulfill its copyright assignment?
I do not understand how it could help with the assignment process, which
is mostly a process of getting the paperwork to sign, signing it and
returning it. This process can be done "fully paperbased" and in some
cases it can be done partly electronically or fully electronically.
The details change overtime, as FSF's lawyers work out new procedures
that are more convenient while still being legally valid.
I don't think there's much tool that can be help streamline this process
(tho maybe a lawyer could help, or maybe lobbying some governments to
change regulations).
Of course, there's the rest of the issue which is to figure out who has
signed the needed paperwork already and who hasn't, and how to make sure
all your contributors have signed paperwork.
As maintainer of a GNU package, I have access to this "copyright.list"
information, but the FSF does not make this info public, since it could
probably be considered as a breach of privacy.
Maybe we could come up with some way to make it easier than having to
ask one of those people with access to the copyright.list. Maybe we
could create an "Emacs Copyright Assigned" (ECA) GPG key, and signing
a GPG key with this ECA key would mean "this guy has signed the
paperwork already". Then people can publicly put this signature on
their key if they want to advertise the fact that they have signed the
copyright paperwork. Or they can show you the key in private if they
don't want it to be public.
Stefan